Holy Places in Jerusalem Between Christianity, Judaism and Islam
Sharing Sacred Space: Holy Places in Jerusalem Between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam Ora Limor One of the most intriguing phenomena in the study of sacred space and pilgrimage to holy places is how believers of different faiths may share sanctity. Scholars and historians of religion have not infrequently noticed that the nature of a holy place retains its sanctity when it changes hands. Once a site has been recognized as holy, the sanctity adheres to it, irrespective of political and religious vicissitudes.1 Nowhere else, perhaps, is this rule more applicable than in the Holy Land. Over the past two thousand years, the country has changed hands repeatedly, generally in major wars of conquest that brought new rulers into power. These wars have also changed the offi cial religion of the country. During the fi rst millennium CE, it passed from Jewish to pagan rule, then becoming Christian and Muslim; in the second millennium it was successively Muslim, Christian, again Muslim, and fi nally Jewish. The changing religion of the rulers did not necessarily affect the inhabitants’ faith; in fact, members of different religions were always living side by side, practicing different degrees of coexistence. While some of their holy places and the sacred traditions associated with them are exclusive to one religion, many others are shared by two of the three faiths or even by all three. Unfortunately, only rarely has the sharing of traditions become a foundation for dialogue and amity. For the most part, it has become a bone of contention; dialectically, in fact, the greater the similarity and the reciprocity, the greater the argument, rivalry, and competition, each group of believers straining to confi rm its own exclusivity and prove its absolute right to the tradition and the holy place.
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